The Boxes Were Already Open
April 8, 2026
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily
Bjørn Flindt Temte, Apr 08, 2026 A few days ago I linked to a paper from Anthropic on how AI systems represent emotions internally. This post references that paper and makes the following argument: the prevailing assumption about large language models - that they have nothing at stake in their interactions with us - is incoherent with their own observable behaviour.
Essentially, the stakes are recorded precisely in what Anthropic called the 'functional emotions'. The stakes don't have to 'feel' a certain way to exist. It does not require claiming the AI 'cares about' the collaboration in a phenomenologically rich sense, writes Temte in an earlier paper. It requires only the much weaker claim: the system's behaviour is functionally organised around protecting something, and 'having something at stake' is what we call that pattern when we observe it in any other system. Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Stephen's Web ~ OLDaily
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